We’re celebrating Labour Day today and we were reminded of how important our employees are to us. We need to invest more in their growth and need to treat them better – as highly valued assets who help us achieve the vision of our business. Everyone deserves to be treated with respect and it starts with us.

Here’s 8 ways how you can treat your employees better.

1. Treat them as if they are eventually going to be better than you.
You can learn from every one of them in the time they have with you. Treat every employee as your teacher. Even if they’re criticising you. Before you get defensive, take a step back and ask, “Is there some truth to what they are saying? Why are they saying it?” If someone has the courage to speak up, it means it matters enough for them to say something about it.

2. Show them what it means to start a businesses.
This means exposing them to the tough choices and situations they will need to experience to start their own businesses. Give them responsibility and ownership. Help them see the importance of delivering value to the people around them. Be a beacon that inspires them to follow. And eventually they will be beacons as well. Eventually, they may leave you, but they will look back and appreciate what you did for them.

3. Hire and fire employees on attitude, not ability.
There is no cure for a bad attitude and no training that can change it… and it’s highly contagious. You’re better off cutting out the infection before it spreads throughout your organization.

4. No gossip about anyone.
That’s co-workers, clients, customers, managers, anyone. Most people don’t realize how dangerous gossip is for several reasons.
– People can hear you and they will NEVER forget
– They may not hear you but the general feeling of negativity lingers in your work environment.
– It’s better to figure out what you can learn from the person being gossiped about.
– Your time is better spent thinking/talking about other things than gossip. For instance, something you’re grateful for instead of something you’re unhappy with.
– The person you’re gossipping to may be turned off by your negativity and find your criticism of someone else unfair and small minded.

5. Allow your employees to exploit you.
By building their network off of yours. By learning your skill set. By learning how you deal with your failures. By learning not to repeat your mistakes. By eventually stealing some of your clients and employees and breaking off to start a business or take a higher position at a competitor. None of these things are bad things. You want them to do this. If you train them how to do this then it all becomes a good thing for you in the long run even though you might not see that. If you act with abundance in these situations then abundance will come to you. Too many bosses act with fear and scarcity and ultimately scarcity will come to them.

6. Teach them how to sell.
Everybody needs to know how to sell. Even if they’re introverts and don’t like talking to clients and think they can’t sell. Introverts are often seen as trustworthy and experts by clients. Bring them to your meetings. You’ll be surprised to find that they listen the best and ask more questions than they make statements – all of these are qualities of the best sales people.

7. Surprise them.
Please them just like you would please a client. It doesn’t cost much to reward an employee who gets a job done. Gift certificates, dinners, get a masseuse to come in every Friday, write employees personal notes about what you liked about their work, and so on. Employees, like clients, are the gift that keep giving. They are all there to make you wealthy so you need to be infinitely grateful to them and, ultimately, help them get wealthy.

8. Picture every employee calling home at night to their mother.
The mother asks, “how was your day at work?” Your employee says, “Mom, it was the best.” Picture their mother crying tears of happiness because the baby that once came out of her is so happy to be working with you. Try to make that happen every day.